"Critics argue that giving amnesty to 12 to 30 million illegal aliens in the U.S. would have an immediate negative impact on America’s working and middle class — specifically black Americans and the white working class — who would be in direct competition for blue-collar jobs with the largely low-skilled illegal alien population." JOHN BINDER

In Detroit, throughout the US and in every country, the working class must answer the dictatorship of the banks with the struggle to establish genuine democracy, i.e., workers’ governments committed to the socialist reorganization of economic life to meet the needs of the vast majority instead of enriching a tiny aristocratic elite.

The Detroit bankruptcy ruling: A new chapter in the class war against workers

12 November 2014

The official approval last Friday of Detroit’s bankruptcy plan is a historic milestone with vast national and international ramifications. In his ruling, federal bankruptcy judge Steven Rhodes presented the Detroit bankruptcy as a model for the entire country.

An American city, a manufacturing center in the heart of world capitalism, has been dragged through the bankruptcy courts, shepherded by an “emergency manager” with dictatorial powers, in order to impose a deeply unpopular restructuring plan demanded by the banks and big bondholders.

The devastating implications for the workers of Detroit have only begun to sink in. The settlement attacks the pensions of 23,500 retired city workers, in violation of the state’s constitution, which guarantees public workers’ pension benefits. Health care for these retirees has essentially been eliminated.

The plan turns over the famed Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) to private foundations and hives off other publicly owned assets to the same Wall Street banks whose predatory lending schemes helped bankrupt the city. It creates the framework for escalating the shutoff of water to Detroit households that fall behind in their bill payments, an act of barbarism designed to facilitate the privatization of the water department by making it more attractive to investors.

The ruling class has hardly been able to contain its enthusiasm, with the media parroting the euphoric declaration of Judge Rhodes that the implementation of the brutal austerity plan “bordered on miraculous.” The Detroit News gushed, “Detroit’s journey through bankruptcy was nothing less than a triumph,” while the Detroit Free Press declared, “With the eyes of the world fixed on its every move, Detroit has met the greatest challenge of its last half century with flying colors.”

The use of an unelected emergency manager, installed under an anti-democratic law originally overturned by Michigan voters, won praise in international ruling circles as well. The bankruptcy was “a textbook example of efficiency and pragmatism,” the UK-based Economist wrote, adding that Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr “had the powers of a ‘benevolent dictator’… and he used them well.”
As the Economist indicates, as significant for the ruling class as the actions taken were the means through which they were implemented: the abolition of democratic forms of rule.

At the conclusion of his ruling, Rhodes declared, “It is now time to restore democracy to the people of the City of Detroit.” Here you had a federal judge, sworn to uphold the US Constitution, tacitly admitting that democracy had been suspended over the last 20 months in a major American city.
The idea that democracy is something that is dispensed to the people like manna from heaven, a gift that can be revoked at the whim of the state, is a repudiation of democracy itself. It betrays an utter incomprehension of, and hostility to, the democratic Enlightenment principles upon which the American Revolution and the republic it created were based. The Declaration of Independence insists that all citizens have “inalienable rights” and that the government derives its power solely from the “consent of the governed.”

Asked by a reporter from the World Socialist Web Site to explain this contradiction, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, a multi-millionaire venture capitalist, said he took a “less philosophical and more pragmatic approach” to democracy. The city, he declared, had been in a “financial emergency.” Now that Detroit had been restructured, it “could return to traditional forms of governance.”
In fact, a perpetual dictatorship is being set up in Detroit with the installation of an unelected nine-member Financial Review Commission. The commission will be staffed by representatives of financial and real estate interests, who will have the power to veto the city’s labor agreements, contracts and spending decisions for the next 20 years.

Since September 11, 2001, the “war on terror” and “national security emergencies” have been used to launch illegal wars, build up a vast domestic spying operation, and impose military lockdowns on Boston and Ferguson, Missouri. Now, “financial emergencies” will be declared to suspend “traditional governance” and impose bankers’ dictatorships.

In the comments of officials in Detroit, there is a palpable sense of relief. They were able to get away, at least for now, with a massive crime.

In an interview last week, Orr told a local news outlet he had been concerned about the danger of “civil unrest.” Judge Rhodes acknowledged that a “large number” of Detroiters “were angry that your City was taken away from you and put into bankruptcy.”

How was this opposition suppressed? There was, first of all, the unity of the entire political establishment. The line-up at the post-bankruptcy press conference, which was called to lavish praise on Rhodes, demonstrated this unity. Present were Republican Governor Rick Snyder, Democratic Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr, Democratic Detroit City Council President Brenda Jones, Democratic Mayor Mike Duggan, and a slough of other officials.

Largely behind the scenes, the Obama administration backed the Detroit bankruptcy. One of its top economic advisors, former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, has spearheaded the lie that “unsustainable” pension costs are the biggest problem facing states and municipalities.

But the most critical role was played by the trade unions, which were called in to suppress, dissipate and disorient working class opposition. A so-called “grand bargain” was struck that included a massive payoff to the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the United Auto Workers and other unions. In exchange for a half- billion-dollar retiree health care trust, the unions backed the attack on their members.

The bankruptcy of Detroit sets a national and international precedent for the escalation of a social counterrevolution that aims to destroy all of the past gains won by workers, including the right to an income after a lifetime of labor. This is why it has the support of the entire corporate and political establishment, including the trade union and “civil rights” organizations and the various pseudo-left groups that operate in and around the Democratic Party.

Only the World Socialist Web Site and the Socialist Equality Party have fought to mobilize the strength of the working class against the bankers’ dictatorship. The working class, we insisted, could place no confidence in any of the official institutions, including the bankruptcy court. Instead, workers, retirees and young people had to organize independently and in opposition to the entire economic and political set-up.

On this basis, the SEP organized the October 4, 2013 demonstration at the DIA—the only organized expression of mass working class opposition to the bankruptcy—and the February 15, 2014 Workers Inquiry, which exposed the political forces behind the conspiracy and the historical and international significance of the battle in Detroit for the entire working class. Earlier this year, the SEP founded the Detroit Workers Action Committee (DWAC) to build support for an independent industrial and political struggle.

In Detroit, throughout the US and in every country, the working class must answer the dictatorship of the banks with the struggle to establish genuine democracy, i.e., workers’ governments committed to the socialist reorganization of economic life to meet the needs of the vast majority instead of enriching a tiny aristocratic elite.
The end of the bankruptcy process draws to a close one chapter of the class struggle in Detroit. It is not the last. Resistance to this attack will inevitably grow. The Socialist Equality Party calls on workers and young people in the Detroit metropolitan area to join and build DWAC, and for workers everywhere to take up the fight for socialism.

Meanwhile, the parties are in agreement on the big issues:
expanding imperialist war in the Middle East and elsewhere; intensifying
government spying on the American people; imposing further cuts in social
services and deeper attacks on the jobs, wages and benefits of working people;
dispensing more tax giveaways to corporate America and the rich.

After the US elections: An intensification of war and social counterrevolution

10 November 2014

It is less than one week since the US midterm elections, and already the Obama administration, in alliance with Republican and Democratic congressional leaders, is moving aggressively to implement unpopular policies that were entirely excluded from the election campaign.
On foreign policy, the White House announced Friday that the US will send an additional 1,500 troops to Iraq, doubling the number of US soldiers there. Administration officials also said they will request $5 billion from Congress to fund the operations in the Middle East ostensibly targeting the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
President Obama has let it be known that he will seek a new congressional authorization for use of military force for expanded operations in the Middle East (including against Syria). By mutual agreement, Democratic and Republican lawmakers had scuttled out of Washington for their pre-election break without taking up the issue of authorizing the new Middle East war.
These measures give the lie to Obama’s pre-election pledge that no US troops will be sent into combat in Iraq or Syria. They were undoubtedly decided on before Election Day, but concealed during the months-long campaign so as deprive the American people of having any chance to express their attitude at the polls. Such is the reality of American “democracy.”
On all major questions that affect the lives of the broad mass of the population—beginning with the issue of war—working people have no say. The elections are exercises in deceit and manipulation. All important decisions are made in secret by the military/intelligence agencies and the corporate elite whose interests they defend.
Thus, the first major act by Obama after the election was to hold a closed-door White House meeting at which the congressional leaders of both parties received their marching orders from General Lloyd Austin, the head of US Central Command, which oversees military operations in the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia.
The second major announcement, also on Friday, did not come from Washington, but it had the full support of the White House and both parties. This was the approval by federal bankruptcy judge Steven Rhodes of Detroit’s “plan of adjustment” to exit bankruptcy.
The plan, drawn up by Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr, a close ally of the White House, is a frontal assault on the pensions and health benefits of city workers, combined with a sell-off of public assets, to pay off the Wall Street banks and bondholders that have been bleeding the city dry for decades.
The bankruptcy of Detroit, once the center of auto manufacturing in America and the world, is part of a bipartisan policy of social counterrevolution that has already produced a massive transfer of wealth from the working class to the rich. In the days since the election, Obama and House Republican leaders have indicated they will seek agreement on a sharp reduction in the corporate tax rate, among other reactionary measures.
Neither party discussed the ever-greater concentration of wealth at the very top or the relentless assault on the working class during the election campaign. Their secret agenda of new handouts to big business and new attacks on social programs and working class living standards was deliberately concealed.
Obama himself delivered a campaign speech in Detroit just days before the election and the deadline for Judge Rhodes’ ruling and never even mentioned the bankruptcy. This is the same man who months before had declared he would spend his remaining time in office focusing “like a laser” on the problem of social inequality.
The Republican victory last Tuesday was not the result of a surge in popular support for the Republican Party or its right-wing policies. It was the result of the collapse of the Democrats. Record-low voter turnout reflected above all the alienation and bitterness of working people and youth who had no interest in voting once again for an administration and party that worked hand-in-glove with the other right-wing party of big business to attack their living standards and democratic rights and go from one imperialist war to another.
The estimated turnout for the elections stands at 36.4 percent, the lowest since 1942 (when many voters were unable to cast ballots due to the Second World War). In many of the most significant states in the country (including California, New York, Indiana and New Jersey), turnout was less than a third. This means that in most races, the winner received the votes of only 15 to 20 percent of the electorate.
The election marked the collapse of the Democrats’ electoral strategy of using the politics of gender, race and sexual preference—the obsession of privileged layers of the middle class—to conceal their agreement with the Republicans on ever more brutal attacks on the working class. The passage of a series of ballot measures to raise the minimum wage, including in states that elected Republicans to Congress and the state house, showed that the masses are moved by basic social and class issues, not the secondary issues that preoccupy the narrow and wealthy base of the Democratic Party.
The Democrats and their pseudo-left allies are proposing various alibis to explain the Democratic debacle, all of which, in one way or another, imply that the working class failed to turn out for the Democrats because it is stupid, racist or both.
Obama himself, in an interview broadcast Sunday on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” program, said the people had somehow failed to appreciate the wonderful things he had done in their behalf. “I think we have not been successful,” he declared, “in going out there and letting people know what it is that we are trying to do and why this is the right direction.” Arrogance and lies! It is precisely because of the things the Obama administration has done—not “for,” but “to”—the vast majority of the people that he is so hated and despised.
The victory of the Republican Party is a distorted reflection of the leftward trajectory of millions of workers and youth and a growing awareness that the Democrats, no less than the Republicans, are a party of Wall Street. However, these sentiments, in a political and electoral system dominated by two right-wing parties of big business, could find mass expression only in the negative, i.e., through abstention.The basic division is not between the Democrats and Republicans, but between a tiny financial oligarchy and the working class, the vast majority of the population. The working class is angry and disillusioned. It increasingly sees through the democratic façade and senses the futility of seeking to address its concerns through the existing political system. This means social opposition must and will develop in conflict with the entire political establishment and the social system, capitalism, it upholds.
Joseph Kishore

POVERTY – HALF OF
AMERICA HITS BOTTOM!

OBAMANOMICS:
HALF or NEARLY HALF OF AMERICA TEETERS ON THE EDGE OF POVERTY… and yet the
Democrat party is determined to legalize Mexico’s looting and hand millions
more jobs to Mexicans… simply to keep wages depressed for their campaign
contributing paymasters!

Obama replaced George W. Bush, who left office the most
reviled president in US history. The election campaign was accompanied by an
enormous amount of media marketing, with a candidate who had no significant political
history packaged as the agent of “hope” and “change.”

Upon coming to office, however, Obama pursued the most
right-wing agenda in US history. It quickly emerged that whatever vague
promises he made were insincere, and that his administration was committed to
an acceleration of the policies of the Bush administration—overseeing a
historic transfer of wealth to the rich, escalating military violence abroad,
and deepening the attacks on democratic rights within the United States.

THE FORBES 400 ARE LOOTING AMERICA FOR EVERY
DROP OF BLOOD THEY HAVE NOT ALREADY STOLEN!

The Rise of bankster-owned Barack Obama and the final
looting of the American middle-class.

.. and Hillary Clinton has vowed to banksters that the best
is yet to come!

BARACK OBAMA will finally leave office having destroyed the
American middle-class, leaving a nation with staggering debts and open borders
invaded and looted by NARCOmex.

He will go off and collect tens of millions in backend bribes from his crony
banksters in the form of “speaking fees”.

This “Hope and Change” clown who was nothing more than
Bush’s third and fourth terms on steroids will continue to blame the republican
party he hoped to destroy with amnesty for 40 million looting Mexicans.